


Hunger and Denial

by Bladespeaker



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Bloody Madness, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Halloween, Imported, Self-Denial, Sylvari, ghost - Freeform, it's crackship o'clock, necromancer - Freeform, the power of suggestion is a fun thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27037249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bladespeaker/pseuds/Bladespeaker
Summary: What is love to a soul that has never known it?
Relationships: Bloody Prince Thorn/Player Character (Guild Wars)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Hunger and Denial

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bloody Madness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21243095) by [Bladespeaker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bladespeaker/pseuds/Bladespeaker). 



He knows she does not love him, nor he her. He knows that it is a game they both play, this little farce, that both of them are in it for power. He knows it as he sees her step through the gate, pale and beautiful, from the realms of the living to the land that is his torment, where they plot as they have for a thousand times the overthrow of his father. He must be cautious, he tells himself – as cautious as he knows she must be, for given the opportunity, he knows that either one of them would sacrifice the other for the ability to be free of their own binding chains.

  
Later, he cannot help but think that whatever plans she has for him must be working – that she must have poisoned him when they drank. If she listens, she might hear something like a heart beating rapidly from his chest. It must be a toxin, he thinks, and consoles himself with the thought that he must have poisoned her, too; he must have cleverly switched her tainted cup with his own partway through their earlier meal. Her voice is musical as she talks about her studies of necromancy and magic and the Mists, and her eyes seem too wide, too bright, for a half-second before she regains her composure. She had taken his hand and turned it palm-up to trace the path of veins through his wrist as she spoke about the binding magics that gave him his form, and then was quickly drawing back the hand she had clutched too tight in his and resuming the conversation they had started so long ago about how to dethrone the Mad Monarch that is his sire.

He knows he does not love her, nor she him. He knows it by the twist in his chest when she leaves, her green eyes widening at the realization that the tether she forged between their worlds has twisted, tangled, grown taut. It must be rage or hate he feels at this inconvenience. That must be the case. Regardless, she cannot stay. It is his saving grace, and hers, as well.  
She wraps the bandage around his arm, where blood would bleed if he was alive and where instead her knife had drawn the black ichor of whatever it was that flowed through his lifeless veins. He may look human, but he has no more claim to it than she with her flesh of leaves and vines.

He remembers the look on her face when she had drawn the blade stained with his life-flow across her lips, eyes staring half-lidded past him, though him, dissecting him with a gaze that was as cool as any skull. His lungs haven’t drawn air for centuries, yet he had felt his breath catch for a half-second as something like fear had jolted through him. And then she had given her information and was gone, and whatever spell she had on him broke; she left, and he returned to his box, where he loved nobody and hated everyone and scowled into the darkness and tried to remove the faint green dance of her eyes from behind his lids.

He knows she doesn’t love him, that they’re only doing this for power, he reminds himself. She knows it, too; she’s said it before with the same slowness he would expect of someone who he’s surely sapped the energy from, as if she’s not certain of it. As if he’s not certain of it. This realm drains both the living and the trapped, they agree; she strengthens his own power every time she stays. That would give anyone reason for hesitation, to feel some sort of drowsy uncertainty.  
They shake their heads, neither looking at each other, and he’s suddenly struck with the feeling that he once more is a child afraid of nothing, and she, she never had the luxury of being a child – or the torment, he thinks, and remembers his own upbringing. They don’t speak much that morning, and he buries himself reading a tome she’s somehow managed to bring back from the living as she explores the boundaries of his prison.

Something like afternoon seems to pass, and he somehow doesn’t flinch at the weight that settles around his shoulders, pressure on his back like a cape, fingers delicately latticing over his collarbone. He can feel her chin on his head and feel her voice through her throat and jaw as she speaks; he knows how easily she could slip a knife into his neck even if he can’t feel one hidden in her small hands. Something hot like poison, like hunger, tips into his withered stomach, and he refuses to let her see it affect him. Instead, he keeps reading, playing the part of interested student as she calmly explains the new rituals that she’s planned, that she may need to observe him again, and he laughs and says that he doesn’t mind her observations, that it doesn’t get cold or hot or uncomfortable in his realm, and she only smiles that cryptic smile and murmurs something he can’t remember.

He doesn’t love her, he tells himself, and curses himself for letting his guard down. She’s poisoned him; he knows it. In the air that isn’t, he feels his skin crawling, hears her voice that isn’t there; she is in his mind and his chest hurts and his stomach twists and something like hunger burns and he can only remember his father’s mad laugh as he locks him in the box that holds his soul, that suffocates him with her breath in his lungs, her blood burning through his veins as she takes it – is it her blood? It is his? He seethes through the empty space suffocated with her presence and breaks something to feel better. He doesn’t. When she steps through the portal an eternity later he feels every inch of rage and fire and helplessness and he storms over to her to tell her that she’s won, that his power must be hers, and –

They don’t love each other, they tell themselves. They’re only doing this for their own freedom, they tell each other. There’s no way this will turn out in their favor, she says quietly, and her fingers trace slow magic over his skin through his veins. The hunger is smaller now, her blood on his lips, his on hers, two magics twining in something that binds them to each other, something deep and old and new. She is small and strong and sharp – she is the knife in his chest; he is the binding seal on her neck. They’re doing this for each other, they nearly say.  
But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? 


End file.
